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And they announced that in two years, when Gates retires, the new CEO will be Hippie Girl! And the Zune will download all Grateful Dead songs free! |
Posted on 11/02/2006 11:24:57 AM PST by HAL9000
Excerpt -
REDMOND, Wash.--Reversing a licensing change announced two weeks ago, Microsoft said on Thursday that it will not limit the number of times that retail customers can transfer their Windows Vista license to a different computer.On Oct. 16, Microsoft issued the new user license for Vista, including terms that would have limited the ability of those who buy a boxed copy of the operating system to transfer that license. Under the proposed terms, users could have made such a switch only one time.
However, the new restriction prompted an outcry among hardware enthusiasts and others. Microsoft is returning the licensing terms to basically what they were in Windows XP--users can transfer their license to a new PC an unlimited number of times, provided they uninstall and stop using it on the prior machine.
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
"And Ballmer's heart grew three sizes larger that day."
Perhaps customers made their displeasure known in sufficient numbers to make a difference.
It's called business. You tick off your customers too often and they quit spending their money with you.
Well, Vista's license limit will remain "for idiots only"... hehe
Glad to hear this.
I can understand why they would want to do it. I just find it unacceptable to have to repurchase Windows if I change too many parts in my computer and Windows recognizes it as a different computer, or if I decide to upgrade to a new computer and decide that I don't need Windows on the old one anymore.
Fortunately there are enough consumers that also feel that locking Windows to the hardware is unacceptable that it would be a bad business decision for Microsoft to do so.
However, I hardly consider a company making efforts to limit the ability of people to pirate their products draconian.
Windows has it's merits and it's flaws, but considering all that it does, as well as the continuous effort to supply security fixes, driver updates, and even some feature updates, I can't really complain about the nominal price of the OS.
If you think that nominal price is too high you can try Linux or one of the other free alternatives. However, they also have their good points and their limitations.
Currently there is no viable option for the typical PC user besides Windows. Linux is still not ready for prime time. It is great for people who know excatly what they are doing but the average user would find the learning curve daunting. Windows is as aeasy as turn on the computer and use it. Linux requires more end user input to use simple things like a CDROM. Of course OS X is only available on a Mac (who can use Windows also btw) so PC users are stucks until someone develops a more user friendly Linux.
You are right on point.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were going to soak up all the money from the impending Vista release, then announce that they are cutting Windows loose.
"We are spinning off our Windows subsidiary."
It is quite possible Windows will someday be available for free download from Microsoft servers, just as they have done with their Express versions of Visual C#, C++, Basic, Web, etc.. They would continue to charge for support, advanced versions of programming languages, SQL servers, and web servers and services. The Windows OS could be the free hook to draw you into the MS world.
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And they announced that in two years, when Gates retires, the new CEO will be Hippie Girl! And the Zune will download all Grateful Dead songs free! |
I was on MS's list for beta testing and then RC1 of Vista. Ran it in a Vmware machine. Don't like the strong WGA type checking. Probably will stick with XP until Ubuntu improves a little more ( and it's pretty good now).
Then of course there's the known fact that users of either Home version can't run it in a VM. There's nothing technical preventing it, Microsoft just doesn't want you to. You also can't use BitLocker or any MS DRM-based application (like media player) from within a VM.
It also denies the doctrine of First Sale, in that you can sell your license to one other person, but that person isn't allowed to further sell it.
At least it does admit that consumer protection and other laws may trump these draconian terms. But you test that at your own risk, just little ol' you vs. big multibillion dollar corporation with an army of lawyers.
At this moment, maybe. Windows is still a HUGE piece of their revenue pie. But going forward Office and SQL Server have some serious headwinds from online alternatives. Google has already released online word processor and spreadsheet apps and open source SQL engines are gaining ground also.
The OS gets sold with almost every PC today and at the prices they are getting for Vista, it remains vitally important. As the online apps gain more share, the days of office suites and such are drawing to a close.
Well played.
I think somebody pointed out that their "adhesion clauses" would be challenged and may not have stood up in court.
Try Linspire.
Looks like Windows, runs on Linux.
MS has already ported Office to the Mac (under OS X - Office v.X, Office 2004), as well as an Outlook equivalent called Entourage. By doing so, they've *also* done most of the work to port it to Linux.
Do you have any idea how much Vista is going to cost?
Also, do you know when they will stop supporting XP?
Thanks for any info you can provide ...
There aren't any technical reasons you can't run Home in a VM. The EULA just says you can't.
Not really, but I suspect it will be about the same as Windows XP.
Also, do you know when they will stop supporting XP?
I believe that they officially just stopped supporting Windows 2000. However, due to backlash from driver developers, they decided to include support for Windows 2000 driver in their new Windows Driver Kit.
What Microsoft discontinuing support means for most people is that Microsoft no longer provides security patches and updates (at least not on a regular basis).
I believe that Microsoft usually does this for about 4 years after the new version comes out, but in the past I believe that those support dates have sometimes been extended due to customer demands.
You'd really need to contact Microsoft for a real answer, but I suspect they would be happy to provide you with the official date.
Microsoft tries to keep their large corporate customers from demanding that they support old versions forever though licensing contracts that allow the customers to basically pay a maintenance fee on Windows and other products, and upgrade to the latest versions whever they are ready.
It also makes it easier for Microsoft and their customers to be sure that they are running legal copies of Windows. If you've ever worked in computer support for a company that was serious about only running legal software, it can be a time consuming task to keep all those licenses strait.
Now that more and more powerful embedded computers are using X68 processors, Windows is starting to get used more and more in the embedded military market (nonessential systems in my experience). However, it often takes a long time to develop such a system and the military doesn't like hearing that they will have to change something as significant as the OS in 4 years or less from when they take delivery of the product.
They will have to pay for maintenance contracts. Unlikely in most cases. They can use a different OS. Likely in some situations, but if they want a support for a particular Linux version for that long they will have to pay someone to support it as well, and traditional embedded OSs are less feature rich (and often obscenely expensive). They can also learn to accept the fact that technology changes faster than it once did. Accessing new technology more quickly was one of the goals in moving towards COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that they will need to be doing updates to products on a shorter cycle.
"nominal price"?
I've seen the full retail box Windows XP Pro priced over $200 Cdn in the same computer shops in Toronto's Chinatown that were selling PCs for under $300 Cdn; when OS software can be 2/3 the price of [admittedly low-spec] hardware that can hardly be called 'nominal'.
Very few pay the full retail price for Windows. You can purchase an OEM copy much cheaper if you purchase some kind of hardware at the same time. However, $200 Cdn still seems a bit high.
Most home users also have no real reason to need XP Pro as opposed to XP home.
For a business, which is what XP Pro is targeted at, $200 Cdn is a nominal price. Consider if you have to have someone come in and take a look at that computer because you have a problem. How much are they going to charge? $45 to $60 an hour.
Think of all the things that operating system provides and how often you use it. Compare the one time fee for the OS to things like your cable TV bill.
Think about what other software costs. We just purchased VHDL design and analysis software for $40,000.
Software on a system almost always outstrips the cost of the hardware. Software gets updated much more often. Companies dump vast sums of money into developing software. They develop a product which they feel their customers will be willing to pay enough for that they can make a return on that investment even though they often spend a year or more developing the software before they can start selling it and getting a return on that investment.
PCs at that low of a price are usually somehow tied to a service or are being used to sell other products. The company takes a loss on the price of that product in order to make money selling another product, so when you hit those really low priced computers, you really aren't doing a fair comparison.
Microsoft spends huge sums of money developing, marketing, distributing, and supporting Windows. If you paid attention during the anti-trust suit, you would have noticed that Windows itself is far from a cash cow. MS doesn't make much money off of Windows, they make most of their money off of MS Office.
Microsoft was accused of underpricing Windows in order to prevent competition and that they way the developed Windows gave them an unfair advantage in the Office Productivity Suite market, which is why they were willing to sell it so low.
If you think Windows costs too much, you can try and use Linux to meet your computer needs. It's free.
Linux works extremely well for some things, and horribly for others.
In my experience in a lot of cases I could do what I wanted with Linux, but I had to spend a lot more time getting the system set up and working because I kept having to rebuild drivers for a particular kernel, and in some cases patch the kernel and rebuild the kernel.
For example. I think MythTV on Linux makes a better PVR system than Windows MCE. However, I had to spend a lot of time to get everything set up so that I had MythTV working correctly. I kept having to dig in and find out why commands in the step-by-step instructions failed and fix things.
If I have the choice of spending $100 or fighting with getting things working for hours every evening after work for a week and even then have some problems, that $100 price tag starts looking pretty good.
In my opinion things have gotten worse with Linux 2.6 kernels. Even kernel revisions used to be relatively stable, now there seems to be little difference between a development kernel and what is supposed to be stable.
Significant things are constantly getting changed in minor kernel releases.
Where I work we spend many times the effort supporting our drivers under Linux than we do under Windows.
Windows is a powerful tool, and for most people it's a bargain at it's price. If you disagree there's always Apple's OS Xor Linux as well as a considerable variety of less well known options. Pick the one that you feel is the best value for you.
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